This style was a switch for me but it was enough to keep me hooked EVEN THOUGH I read the scariest words in "book-dom" these days. . . . . . volume 1.

"Loose Threads: Cool Assassins 1" by J. O. Quantaman has 425 pages, ten color pictures, 185 endnotes, appendix and list of characters.
___REVIEW: Quantaman introduces an elite team of spies in this debut sci-fi novel.
___In the not-too-distant future, Nyssa Persson wakes up in a hospital room with a shaved head, unsure of how she got there. The last thing she remembers is fleeing the goons of her Bossman, a pimp who has kept her in servitude for three years. A nurse enters and greets her with a bright smile: "Awake at last….Welcome to Dog Breakfast co-op."
___The co-op turns out to be a democratic community of agents and spies who serve as a check against polluters, plutocrats, and corporate pirates. Nyssa, who’s persuaded to join the group, submits herself to rigorous martial arts training and learns to put her biography to use in the service of espionage.
___Her path intersects with a number of colorful outsiders, including Jenna Marov, a world-class climber who suffers from vertigo and was recently imprisoned in a terrorist detention facility, and Yamazaki Kazuo, a security chief and former kickboxer who still obsesses over a brief encounter with a femme fatale. The deception is taxing, and the work dangerous, but Nyssa is adamant about using her skills to help create a better world. More important, she’s finally found a community that feels like home.
___The novel features some interesting graphic flourishes, including double-indented lines that reveal first-person character thoughts in the otherwise third-person narration. A number of colored maps and charts are included to help the reader feel closer to the action. End material boasts a glossary of futuristic jargon and an excerpt from a sequel novel.
___Quantaman’s prose style is concise and staccato ("He reckons the rump in the Diet will pressure the ZEST tribunal to rubberstamp Nozokuroba’s wunderkind"), sprinkled with real and invented slang as well as the haikulike inner thoughts of his characters. The protagonists are terse and single-minded, yet Quantaman’s world is so immersive and foreign that they don’t feel flat. The plot leaps about in time and between storylines, maintaining a dynamism that keeps a reader on his toes. There is much here that will likely enlist fans for further adventures set in this idiosyncratic universe.
___A sci-fi tale with a distinctive voice and a determined heroine.
—Kirkus Reviews